


An Insufficient Gambit

by ghostrunner



Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-20
Updated: 2014-03-20
Packaged: 2018-01-16 09:58:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1343317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostrunner/pseuds/ghostrunner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>affair, quiet, proper, palm</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Insufficient Gambit

It’s James who teaches her to play chess. Her husband says she’s impossible to instruct, she won’t sacrifice useless pawns, she’s not cutthroat enough. James shows her how to make her habit of picking pieces off from the outside into a strategy

“Nate has no patience for it,” he says, smiling, “but it’s fine if you want to play it that way.”

“You’re a good teacher. Very patient.” 

Something shifts in his face when she says that. Something deep and dark and sad. Maggie rushes to cover it back over. 

“I’ll never be very good,” she says. She’s seen him play with Nate, cutting right for the heart, laying traps and giving up everything for the slightest advantage. 

He shrugs, sips the whiskey she poured him an hour ago. The good stuff Nate only brings out for friends. “That’s alright, Maggie,” he says. “It’s just a game.”

\--

He has the mail in his hand when she opens the door. “Your postman had just arrived,” he says, a little apologetically. 

Maggie wants to laugh, but she couldn’t say why it’s funny. He’s somehow very British at the moment, in a way he normally isn’t. 

Nate’s sent a postcard for Sam. From Amsterdam. He probably bought it in Berlin. He does things like that. 

James is watching her face while she reads the back. He doesn’t look away when she catches him at it. 

“It’s only four lines,” she says, nonsensically. 

His mouth twists. “It’s a demanding job,” he says. “Don’t worry, I can’t imagine he’d forget about you.” 

Cahn’t, she thinks, smiling. Cahn too. Her smile fades. She can imagine it perfectly. 

She offers him the postcard. He leaves his hand on hers when he takes it. 

“James…”

“Jim,” he says. 

\--

She’s not having an affair with her husband’s best friend. She’s not. 

Maggie’s just not that sort of person. And anyway what kind of sensible person has an affair with a man who is, if possible, even less available than their frequent flying husband? 

She could have one with someone else, she supposes. Someone unlike either of them, who has no idea what the main airport in Austria is called, much less ever chased a thief through it, on the trail of a Dutch old master. Someone who doesn’t know one end of a gun from the other or the first thing about museum security. Someone who doesn’t smile like there’s something clever behind his teeth, doesn’t play chess like a shark. 

… No, she couldn’t. 

James drops by when Nate is in town and when he isn’t with equal frequency. He brings Sam a model airplane from wherever he’s been and he brings her an intricately carved hairpin and he presses his palm against her shoulder when she kisses him briefly, in greeting. 

She wants to say, ‘If I were going to, it would be you,’ but she knows that James thinks the way Nate does, and she knows that she doesn’t have to say anything. 

“I was just in the neighborhood,” he says with a completely straight face. 

“Do you ever fool anyone with lies like that?” She steps forward to close the door and he stands in the foyer instead of moving past her into the kitchen. He smells like international air travel and yesterday’s cologne. She wants to smooth the collar of his shirt. Doesn’t. 

“I fool everyone,” he says. He smiles, crooked and a little regretful. “Everyone except you.”

\--


End file.
